


Peony

by the_actual_letter_n



Category: De Eneste To (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, M/M, One Shot, maybe like half a plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7194650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_actual_letter_n/pseuds/the_actual_letter_n
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a tumblr prompt "Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?”"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peony

The end goal of Peter's life plan of owning a flower shop was always to live calmly.

As with any business, there were boring, difficult and stressful parts but in the end, the nature of his job meant that he was spending most of his time surrounded by beauty. Even on busy, frantic days, when customer after customer lined up to recite impossibly complicated orders, the small space of the shop was warm and filled with a gentle mixture of a hundred different fragrances. As cramped as it might have seemed, with pastel yellow walls barely visible from behind the shelves of flower pots, it had a refreshing, open quality to it - on sunny days, light from the wide window weaved through the green tapestry of stems and painted tangled shadows on the wooden floor, bringing to mind a forest landscape rather than a large street in the middle of the city, where the shop was located.

The atmosphere wasn't only soothing to Peter, but it seemed to affect his customers as well. Whoever walked into the shop, no matter how rushed or upset they initially appeared, stopped in their tracks just as the door shut behind them and the tiny bell above it rang out in the humid air. There was something about flowers that brought barely noticeable smiles to people's faces, compelling their hands to gently brush against the leaves and petals.

The customers were another reason Peter liked his job. On a daily basis, young boys, girls, and others all but floated into his shop, making a beeline for the red roses and asking for the most impressive of decorations, their eyes twinkling with excitement of a blooming feeling. Tough-looking men in leather jackets pulled up on their motorcycles and picked out tiny potted plants for their mothers. Completely random people absentmindedly shared stories of a lover turning thirty, or of a friend coming from afar, or an engagement party, or a cat who would devour any plant that wasn't a cactus. Those little glimpses into strangers' lives made each day in the shop unique and, as rushed as some of them were, brought with them a sense of wholeness that made Peter feel peaceful, as if his own life existed in a harmony with so many others.

So his confusion was justified when one evening the door banged open and a flurry of black leather and silver rings stormed into the store, marched right up to him, slammed a note on the counter and said:

'How do you say "fuck you" in flower language?'

Peter blinked.

'What?'

'"Fuck you",' repeated the man across from him. His dark hair was in disarray, as if he was running. 'I wanna say that to someone, but in a way that makes it look like I'm happy for their accomplishment. So with flowers.'

'I, uh.' Peter searched his mind for an appropriate answer. 'What?' he decided.

'Come on, man.' The customer threw a glance behind his shoulder and gestured around the shop. 'Flower language! I need this stat, I won't have time to swing by tomorrow. How do I say "fuck you"?'

Peter opened his mouth, but promptly closed it again before a third "what" made him look like he'd forgotten how to speak. He exhaled and took a minute to collect his thoughts, observing the man on the other side of his counter. He was shorter than Peter and dressed in black, with a pair of sunglasses hanging from the chest pocket of his leather jacket. His face was all angles and anticipation, with intensely blue eyes fixed on Peter in a gaze of a man on a mission. Long fingers weighted with numerous rings tapped the wooden counter impatiently.

'Uh, sorry, but I'm not sure how to help you,' Peter said eventually. 'I don't know anything about... "flower language".'

'What?' It was the customer's turn to be bewildered. 'You gotta know flower language! You're the flower guy!'

'Sorry, I'm not sure that's a real...'

'Bullshit!' he exclaimed, slapping one more note on the desk. 'I saw on the internet, you give someone five lilies wrapped in ivy and that means "rebel leader is dead, rendezvous in the docks". You gotta be able to say "fuck you" like that."

'Why don't you ask the internet, then?' Peter shot back, raising his eyebrows slightly. The guy was being unnecessarily loud and, quite frankly, annoying.

The customer narrowed his eyes and swiped the notes from the counter back into his pocket.

'Fine,' he scoffed, still piercing Peter with a stare. 'I'll go somewhere else.'

'Apologies for the inconvenience,' Peter tried to make his go-to phrase not sound overly sarcastic, he obviously failed - the man threw him one last glare and stormed out of the shop as abruptly as he had entered it. The bell chimed softly in contrast to the slamming door.

Peter sighed and reached to a drawer below the desk for his keys. It was time to close up anyway. He would have hoped for a calmer end to a day of work, but apparently sometimes fate just had to get a rude customer out of its system before night shift. Until now, Peter had only had to deal with indifferent or stressed out people - not too pleasant, but understandable and, in the end, forgettable. He was sure the flower language guy would stick with him for a better part of the week at least.

Walking home in the early spring darkness, he couldn't help his thoughts drifting back to the man's eager face, the way his cheeks flushed from the same haste that had tangled his hair. That "fuck you" must have been really important to him, as absurd as it sounded.

Peter found himself regretting the argument pretty quickly. Yes, the man was rude and his request was strange, but just because Peter had never heard of the "flower language" didn't mean it wasn't a real thing. He was still relatively new to the flower business, there might have been things he didn't know. Maybe he could have learned something from the customer who asked for a profanity spelled in flowers.

He decided to take his own advice and - ask the internet. Unsurprisingly, he found nothing about rebel leaders, but he did discover a few websites with very detailed dictionaries, listing and sorting flowers by their meanings according to colour, quantity and even placement in an arrangement. Many were intuitive - red roses meant love, white lilies purity - but there were some carrying much more specific messages. Peter would never think there were flowers symbolizing a "return to happiness", but there they were, complete with a list of tips for how to hint at what said return was from.

Peter honestly felt like a bit of an idiot - you'd think, wanting to own a flower shop, he would have looked into flowers a little deeper than the optimal air humidity for keeping them. He might have had his business strategy figured out, but, until today, he had been strikingly ignorant.

And he wouldn't have even known if it wasn't for the yelling man demanding a "fuck you". Peter suddenly felt even worse about losing his cool back at the shop; he should have listened, or at least told the guy to wait while he did his research. Yes, time had seemed of essence, but if the man had known that Peter's shop was the only one in an at least four mile radius, he probably wouldn't have had opposed to a couple minutes of delay. Peter suspected that his would-be customer had gone home empty-handed.

That thought cemented his feeling of guilt and the strange vexation with the memory of the man's face. He grimaced and reached behind his laptop for a pen and a piece of paper. Hopefully, there really was a way to say "fuck you" in flower language.

\---

Peter had spent a better part of the night figuring out the best way to arrange a bouquet to spell out an expletive. The task was made even harder by the lack of context; he did include a flower symbolizing disappointment, but he wasn't sure if it was right for the situation. Maybe the man in the leather jacket wasn't disappointed - just angry. 

The bigger problem was, Peter had no idea what he would actually do with the flowers. He had picked them out and wrapped them in tissue paper before he even opened the shop - the strikingly colourful crown of petals was now hidden in the back room, occupying one of the few vases that weren't on display - but he had no plans for how to deliver them to the man. He didn't seem eager to bring his business back; that and he did mention he wouldn't have time to visit today. Peter was out of moves.

However, when fate had decided to drop the difficult customer on his doorstep the evening before, it apparently hadn't done so with an intention of letting its plan go unfinished. And so, through the tiny piece of the front window that wasn't covered by the colourful thicket, Peter caught a glimpse of a leather-clad figure rushing past. He started and jumped to the back room, grabbing a handful of streamers on the way, vaguely matching the overall colour of the bouquet. He carefully weaved them between the stems and lifted the whole thing out of the vase before dashing out into the main room and then onto the street, almost colliding with an older woman just outside the door.

'Hey!' he called, watching the black silhouette disappear into the crowd. He realized he didn't even know the man's name. 'Hey!' he shouted again, pushing past other people on the sidewalk. 'Hey! "Fuck you" guy!'

A couple of heads turned towards him - including the one he hoped for. The man in the leather jacket stopped in his tracks and spun around, his face painted with a mixture of bewilderment and humour. Peter realized what he had said, but he wasn't about to let that stop him.

He walked up to the man and extended an arm with the flowers.

'Here,' he said. 'These say "fuck you". Hope you're not late for whatever you needed them for."

The man stared at him for a while and a blush crept up his cheeks again, even though he obviously wasn't running this time. With visible difficulty, he turned his eyes to the flowers and hesitantly accepted them, turning the bouquet around, as if counting all the contrasting colours within it. Finally, he looked back up at Peter and his face lit up with a sudden smile.

'This is awesome!' he exclaimed and Peter could swear he looked ten years younger than he did just a second ago. 'Thanks, man.'

'Uh, no problem,' Peter smiled too, taken slightly aback by the sudden enthusiasm. 'Sorry I was a bit of a dick yesterday. And for calling you "fuck you guy", I guess.'

'I've been called worse,' the man grinned, bringing the flowers close to his chest. 'My name is Simon.'

'Peter. Can I ask why you need to tell someone "fuck you" in flower language?'

'My boss got promoted and we're throwing her a goodbye party,' Simon explained, still grinning. 'But she's an asshole and never does any work, so I'm saying good riddance.'

'Huh,' Peter couldn't help the smile spreading on his face. 'Well, that meadowsweet is pretty fitting, then.' He pointed to the narrow cone of delicate white flowers placed right in the middle of the bouqet. 'It symbolizes uselessness. And the geranium is for stupidity.'

Simon laughed and suddenly grabbed Peter's shoulder, close to his neck.

'This is perfect,' he said and quickly withdrew his hand, although Peter didn't protest. 'Listen, I gotta go, this party starts in ten minutes. I'll drop by in the evening and pay for this, okay?'

'Yeah, sure,' Peter replied and before he knew it, Simon grinned at him one last time and disappeared in the stream of people, a dark figure adorned with a wildly colourful floral blur.

\---

It was well after the early sundown when the bell above the flower shop's entrance rang out and the door let in the evening chill along with a man in a leather jacket.

'How was the party?' Peter asked from above the box of decorations he was reorganizing.

'Pretty boring,' Simon admitted in an unusually level voice. He hovered around the small room, eyes fixed on the flowers. He reached to the vase of lilies and picked out a long-stemmed pink one with spiraling petals. 'Only entertainment was knowing what those flowers meant. I think one of my co-workers caught on though, she was giving me looks all day.'

'I hope she appreciated the effort.' Peter observed the back of Simon's head as he walked from shelf to shelf, gathering flowers and pointedly avoiding looking at him. A yellow tulip joined the lily in his hand, then a pink rose with a smooth, thornless stem, then a bunch of jonquils. 'The boss too, actually.'

'Mhm,' Simon took a few more flowers from the shelf near the door. 'I, uh, I'm sorry I was a dick, too. I shouldn't have yelled.' He finally turned around, his face visibly red and eyes still looking aside. He walked up to the counter and carefully set everything down. 'I want these. As well as the previous one, I mean. It's... a different occasion.'

'Okay,' Peter raised an eyebrow. 'Do you want it decorated, or...'

Simon didn't answer, tapping his fingers on the counter again, but in a different manner than he had the day before. This time, his movements were more shaky than frantic, his eyes darted from the flowers to the floor, to the ceiling, everywhere but ahead. His features seemed somehow softer as well, again painted with anticipation, but of a different, more anxious kind.

'I, uh,' he said eventually, growing slightly redder. 'I just wanna send a message. I guess. Yeah.'

Peter regarded him for a while and then his brain dashed back to the dictionaries he'd read and he looked down onto the flowers on his counter. He really hadn't had to dig deep to find the resources he'd found. Anyone could have spent an afternoon on florist forums and figured out what a thornless rose meant. He named and counted the flowers, searching his mind for their meanings - finding, as well as words and numbers, a strange mixture of surprise and amusement, which bloomed into contentment and then into something that made his chest feel light and brought a small, slightly cocky smile onto his face.

He looked up at Simon, who was now staring at him with a painfully unambiguous intensity. Peter raised his eyebrows and pointed at the blue spider flower in the middle of the would-be bouquet.

'"Elope with me"?'

'Unless you have one that says "do you wanna see a movie?",' Simon shot back, raising his hands in defense. 'Like... Friday, maybe.'

Peter felt his smile widen and his own face going warm with a sudden blush.

'I don't think flowers can say that,' he said, picking up a jonquil and gently sliding it into the pocket of Simon's jacket. 'Good thing you did, then'

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I don't know shite about flowers.
> 
>  
> 
> \--  
> Based on this [http://koscheiis.tumblr.com/post/145738369188/flower-shop-au] tumblr post and a bad sleep schedule.


End file.
